Concerned I might be too stupid for this game

[Fiona Kaenbyou]

So I just saw the trailers and high praise for this title and it's definitely enough to pique my interest, but I'm concerned that it might require me to be a great deal smarter than I actually am.

My past experience with puzzle titles has been very hit or miss. The Witness lost me early on because I couldn't make the proper connections to figure out how half the puzzles even worked, and I gave up a few worlds into The Talos Principle because they were genuinely too hard for me to figure out.

On the other hand I loved Inscryption, and Lorelei and the Laser Eyes is probably my GOTY for 2024. (I filled like 3-4 pages with my notes for that game and was extremely proud when I beat it with zero outside assistance.)

I'm not sure why one group of puzzles clicked with me so well when the other didn't. My best guess is that Witness/Talos are a lot more physical in their puzzle design, while LatLE is largely about remembering stuff and figuring out where it has to go. If it's more like the latter than the former I think I might have a good time with it, otherwise I might just not be able to follow the game's line of logic and end up hopelessly stuck.

Can anyone point me in the right direction on this sort of thing? Or would my best play be to just buy the game and use the 2 hour return period to figure out if it works for me?

EDIT: Realised I forgot to include another very important point of reference: Void Stranger. I tried desperately to like Void Stranger but the game's unforgiving nature and its overly arcane puzzles were too much for me to handle. Given what I've heard about having to rebuild and redraft the mansion every day I'm a little concerned that I might fall into the same trap here...

[Lexomatico]

From what i've seen this game has almost no puzzles at all. It's mostly finding the solution like codes and patterns somewhere else written down. It's more an exploration game than anything else.

[Laetificat]

I would say it leans more in the direction of Lorelei than Witness.
However I've now played 6h and it is very hard to get into in my opinion. For 5h I felt like I wasn't making any significant progress and not learning anything. However my last 2 runs have been very fruitful because drafting the right rooms and finding the right items allowed me to gain more information.
I knew before playing that you're heavily encouraged to take notes and pay attention but I kind of dismissed that and just started playing. Maybe that's why I had a hard time with it.
Before I started playing I also thought there were more "active" puzzles like the box puzzle you will probably see very early on, but that isn't the case. It is very information based, but unlocking new information can be somewhat luck based since it often requires a certain combination of rooms and/or items.

Hope that helps, I'm still trying to figure out what the game is myself, but that's my impression so far.

[Pontus]

It's a puzzle adventure. Akin to Outer Wilds. It's not a puzzle-puzzle game. You'll be fine

[Pontus]

And yeah, I've completed Void Stranger entirely, except for the update optional mode. I've played Blue Prince for 6 hours now, and while I see some elements that can be endgame puzzles, but they don't seem as nearly as absurd as in VS.

[MorpheusLunae]

From what I've seen so far it's puzzly but nowhere near as abstract (at best) or tedious (at worst) as Void Stranger is. However, I still haven't experienced any of the highest heights VS had (at least two of the best moments in ALL games I've ever played) but maybe it'll happen here as well. Who knows! I've only played for a little bit so far.

[[ZSU] Dave247]

The game is heavy in the rougelike elements, to the point where if that isn't something you really like then this game is likely to frustrate you to no end, as it has been doing for me.

The second aspect of a typical rougelike game is skill, but here I would say that has instead been replaced with intelligence, which is what makes this game unique and different as I don't know of any to have mixed the two before. That is where the puzzle aspect is based on, but as others have said it is primarily about information. Information that, due to the randomness factor introduced with it being a rougelike, you are very unlikely to have everything you need available to you when you need it. Hence the strong recommendation of taking of notes of just about everything, as there are a lot of things where you need to use a specific item in a specific room to learn what you need to do to do a thing. But to first even realise that what it is that you need to do becomes a challenge in itself.
You can't just freely explore due to there also being a step counter, so you are led to playing as efficiently as possible which adds yet another layer of difficulty as you don't just need to find both the item and the room, but you also need to be able to get (back) to the room without running out of steps.

There are two outright puzzles from what I have seen. One is logic based and explained when you find it. While the other is math based that gets increasingly difficult the more you encounter/solve it, but it first requires you to have gone through the steps I mentioned above first to discover the required information of how the puzzle actually works.

I have cheated and looked up at what done of the later secrets involve as I've given up all hope of being able to play this game legitimately, where it does look to get a lot more complex, but most of not all of that complexity still only seems to stem from the rougelike element where you need to complete a much longer series of steps to first learn the required information and then for finally act on it, which will take multiple runs to do.

Basically, this is first and foremost a rougelike game. If you enjoy those, even if you aren't one for the typical puzzle game, there may be a few places where you get stuck and need to look up a hint, but you should still get a lot of enjoyment out of it.

If however you aren't really that much into rougelikes like me, then I would strongly caution you on this game as at best it is likely to bore you, and at worst frustrate or even piss you off when it doesn't feel like you are making any progress and the RNG is stacked against you.

If though you enjoy rougelikes, mystery and a bit of puzzles though, then boy do I have what will probably be one of your new all time favourite games.


Also the game is available on Xbox Gamepass, which might be more /easier of a value proposition for you. It's how I've been playing it.

[joridiculous]

Originally posted by Lexomatico:

From what i've seen this game has almost no puzzles at all. It's mostly finding the solution like codes and patterns somewhere else written down. It's more an exploration game than anything else.

Game got a lot of puzzles. But they are not that obvious until you got certain room combination and some other things you unlock.
But since this is a RougueLite progression carries over from day too day you can solve the puzzles when ever(almost)

Originally posted by Fiona Kaenbyou:

So I just saw the trailers and high praise for this title and it's definitely enough to pique my interest, but I'm concerned that it might require me to be a great deal smarter than I actually am.

My past experience with puzzle titles has been very hit or miss. The Witness lost me early on because I couldn't make the proper connections to figure out how half the puzzles even worked, and I gave up a few worlds into The Talos Principle because they were genuinely too hard for me to figure out.

On the other hand I loved Inscryption, and Lorelei and the Laser Eyes is probably my GOTY for 2024. (I filled like 3-4 pages with my notes for that game and was extremely proud when I beat it with zero outside assistance.)

Go for it. Too bad the Demo is gone afaik (WHY, its such a good thing for people wanting the try a game for free).
There are some tricky puzzles in the game, but most of them are "normal" puzzles like finding / figuring codes, word combinations, some maths. Not much 'physical' puzzling.

If you don't like the game you can always refund before playing for 2 hours. Steam allow you to refund for any reason.

[[ZSU] Dave247]

Originally posted by joridiculous:

Too bad the Demo is gone afaik (WHY, its such a good thing for people wanting the try a game for free).

When I was looking back on old topics, I found people who played the demo having discovered and even started to solve the later game secrets and one of the developers warning they had discovered more then was intended for the demo. I would hazzard a guess to say this was the reason it was taken down, as despite there having been a 4 day limit, a lot of the content still seemed to be part of the demo so by manually deleting your saves you could manipulate being able to play the game again and again and get further a lot quicker each time, due to the games' primary theme being about information.

[wildcardbitches]

The reviews make it seem like it's a roguelike Myst or something. It's more of a walking sim with some codes you have to remember, than real a puzzle game. I'm having a hard time understanding the super high praise. 90% of the game is placing the same exact rooms and hoping RNG is nice.

Kind of reminds me of the reviews for loop hero where they were like "OMG there are so many possibilities of placing different tiles together" and there were a few and it's mostly just the same exact game over and over hoping RNG is nice.